Random thoughts, cheap shots and bon mots

Registration is now open for SCALE 9X — register now by clicking on the winking penguin. Also, apologies to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Scott Ostler, whose six words in this blog’s title often appear on his sports columns.

Whatever our opinions of Facebook might be, I think we can all agree that the social network which garnered Mark Zuckerberg Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” serves humanity not by releasing any relevant information about the inner workings of government or anything like that, but serves as the biggest human time sink in history. But as such, we’re going to start with it, and . . . .

Give a hand where needed: Ken Starks and I have worked together in the past on the Lindependence Project — and we may do so again this year (more on this another time) — and his baby, the HeliOS Project, does great things for kids in the Austin, Texas, area. Specifically, the project provides castoff computers which run Linux to underprivileged kids in the area. The HeliOS Project is in a contest where top three finishers in popularity — you have to “like” them, in the Facebook mode of liking — are awarded a monetary prize for the most “likes.” Even if there wasn’t an award at the end of this contest 12 hours from now, you should still “like” this project. Go here if you’re on Facebook and give them a click. This just in . . . HelioOS Project made it as one of the top three finishers at the Rock A Charity Event on Feb. 18. HeliOS, Well Aware, and English at Work are the three top-finishing charities in the contest. Congrats, Ken!

After returning from Tempe, Ariz., losing a fight with a cold and then rallying, we can now talk about . . .

FUDCon finishes with a flurry: Literally — many of my Fedora colleagues who attended FUDCon in Tempe, Ariz., at the beautiful campus of Arizona State were stranded there after Monday thanks to snowstorms in what seemed to be every state east of the Rockies. Without going into great detail — after all, I did that already as Larry the Fedora Guy (you knew that was coming) — what I did want to say was that events like this are great for getting people face-to-face and working on a common goal. Eternal thanks go to Robyn Bergeron, Ryan Rix, Paul Frields, Ian Weller, Max Spevack and others who put on this great event.

From there we turn up the temperature . . . .

Trying the new hotness: Adam Williamson invites those who are interested to give GNOME 3 a workout: Adam writes, “Fedora will be running three test days to aid in the final polishing and stabilization of the GNOME 3 release, and make sure Fedora 15 provides a good desktop experience. This is a great opportunity to help both GNOME and Fedora development and help make sure you can work effectively in GNOME 3 when it lands on your desktop.” If you’re so inclined, go for it.

And, in closing, the editorial “we” reminds you of the last three words of The Heart Sutra: “Don’t Waste Time.”

(Fedora ambassador Larry Cafiero runs Redwood Digital Research in Felton, California, and is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation. He is also one of the founders of the Lindependence Project.)

LtFSG said “…what I did want to say was that events like this are great for getting people face-to-face and working on a common goal.”
Now just hold on, there is no way that geeks will ever “get together” for anything other than a lan party. That part
about “working on a common goal” LOL.

The comment above was intended to be sarcasm. Linux and FOSS
are Community. Community means common goals. As for that face to face stuff…. Having lunch with LtFSG in Felton, CA,
coffee with Ken Starks at 0:darkthirty in the morning in Austin, TX and more coffee with my buddy solo and his wife in Peoria, IL, yes that Peoria, have been the high points of my travels through Linux Land. The Colonel is not l33t enough to carry the floppies for these guys but they treat me as one of the “community”. I can live in this community.

As said in the original post, go help the heliOS project, please! Don’t waste time.

With all due respect, sir . . . You are, as you say, “1337” enough to be one of us, and you do what you can where you’re at, and that’s what makes this community go. Don’t ever sell yourself short on this one. By the way, when are you coming back up to Felton?

Now that I’ve been reading up on what’s in GNOME 3, I must say I feel a bit disappointed. My strong impression is that GNOME’s big improvements are all related to the organization of windows and programs, not to better integration of activities (like an improved dbus) or cool context interpretation (like Nepomuk). I’ll give Gnome 3 a spin with my F15 install, I guess, but I’m tempted to switch to KDE, which I’ve previously only used inside Qemu. Am I wrong? Does G3 have advanced features underneath the eye candy?

And are we to expect a full roll-out of systemd with F15, as previously announced?

Thanks again for the informative blog as well as all your other volunteer work.